Global Compact International Yearbook 2013
41
change potentially could incur great costs. Crop yields would
be put at risk by changing precipitation patterns and sea levels
would rise slowly but inevitably. In combination with increas-
ing extreme weather events, this threatens global hubs over
the long term such as New York, Shanghai, and Mumbai, to
name just three examples.
Yet there is also that other consideration, one that neither
I as a scientist nor any business leader can neglect, because
we are citizens of this one world after all. We feel we have a
responsibility to act for those who lack the means to do this –
namely, our distant neighbors living in developing countries
and our children’s children who have yet to be born.
It is a tragedy of historic dimensions that climate change impacts
are likely to be most severe in those countries – and for those
populations – that contributed least to global greenhouse
gas emissions. Most developing countries are situated in the
regions where, for example, the monsoon regime might show
a significantly increased variability, where storm surges might
intensify, and where rising sea levels – which are not distrib-
uted equally across the globe – will be the greatest. Moreover,
it is in these countries that many farmers cannot afford even
for just one season of crops to fail, as they have no reserves to
fall back on. And many governments in these countries do not
have the resources for adaptation measures such as building
dams. It is this combination of factors that, as the World Bank’s
President, Jim Yong Kim, put it, “should shock us into action.”
Now climate change poses a triple problem of distance. First,
of temporal distance: Most impacts of global warming will start
to really be felt in the second half of this century, not now. But
it is right now that one has to act if those future effects are to
be avoided. The second problem of distance is geographical.
Pakistan, which is vulnerable to climate change for many
reasons, is a distant place to care about. But as globalization
makes our world smaller, climate change impacts that disturb
the economic and political stability of Pakistan – which is a
neighbor of Afghanistan and India – quite obviously could
affect our livelihoods as well.
The third problem of distance could be called a cognitive one.
Though the basic facts – such as that CO
2
emissions lead
to global warming – are clear, admittedly the findings of
cutting-edge climate science often are difficult for non-experts
to access and comprehend. The analyses deal with nonlinear
processes in complex systems. They are often based on intricate
computer simulations and come with uncertainties about, for
example, the exact magnitude of climate impacts and their
distribution in space and time. But this can be boiled down
to a risk-management approach. Risk is defined as probability
multiplied by the potential damage. So even if the probability
is small, the potentially huge damage that climate change
implies makes it a very significant risk.
Confronted with risk, and the need to fundamentally change
the way we do business, denial is a popular reaction. However,
to be a corporate citizen also implies the necessity to con-
tribute to the public debate on climate change. That debate
knows four stages of denial: (1) There is no climate change;
(2)
it exists, but it is not man-made; (3) it might be caused by
our greenhouse gas emissions, but the impacts are not dan-
gerous; (4) the impacts might be dangerous, but we cannot
do anything about them because it is too late, too difficult,
or because states and companies will not act. On a different
level, procrastinating and pretending that the matter is not
really urgent can be a form of denial as well. It is that fourth
stage of denial that is the most perfidious.
Unfortunately, the same could be said about attempts to
hide the issue of climate change behind a cloud of further
considerations regarding the sustainability issue. Broadening
an issue can be a way of avoiding the challenge of actually
tackling it. Climate change is a crucial factor, in many cases
triggering other elements of a sustainability vision. Cutting
CO
2
is a prerequisite for achieving progress with other sustain-
ability issues. Therefore, corporate responsibility in the age
of climate change is not about putting recycled paper in the
printer, or sponsoring some game reserve in Kenya. These
might be good things to do, but what companies really need
to do is to consider transforming their core business, as this
has the biggest impact on their greenhouse gas emissions.
For those who dare to do this, promising paths lie ahead. The
world is awaiting innovation that will change our industrial
metabolism. In order to develop smart power grids and new
technologies for energy storage, remove CO
2
from the atmos-
phere through intelligent use of biomass, use urban mining to
recycle materials, find more efficient ways to achieve seawater
desalination, and design newways of urban planning and build-
ing, nothing less than a third industrial revolution is needed.
Again, this is certainly about green growth, but it is also about
responsibility toward society as a whole. The choice about
whether to be a laggard or a pioneer in this approaching in-
dustrial revolution might be the most important part of that
thing we call corporate responsibility.
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Hans Joachim
Schellnhuber has been Director of the
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research (PIK) since he founded the
institute in 1992. Furthermore, he is
Chair of the German Advisory Council
on Global Change (WBGU).
Agenda
Climate Change